George Ryegold

A gloriously bleak worldview

They say that doctors have the blackest sense of humour; something to do with all those birth, death and boils in their everyday lives. Comic Toby Williams’ creation Dr George Ryegold epitomises that sentiment. A vision in corduroy, he grumbles to a roomful of people that his reason for turning to stand-up was an unfair dismissal that saw him sent home to mother where he soon tired of hours filled with David Dickinson, Noel Edmonds and all the other trappings of daytime TV.

Ryegold’s is a gloriously wrong outlook on life, with his verbose spoutings on miscarriage, abortion and China’s one-child policy plus his Shipman-on-rollerblades impersonation has you positively choking in gleeful disbelief. There is some tightening up to be done here though and you get the impression that at the moment it would work better as a 30-minute set. But Ryegold does have the evil edge and magnificent turn of phrase to be, potentially, quite brilliant.

The Malcolm Hardee Award nominee returns. Pioneering stand-up comedy from the eminent physician and polymath. 'As sick as Jim Jeffries, but with the vocabulary of Stephen Fry... some of the most hilariously bad taste lines of the Festival' ★★★★ (Chortle.co.uk); 'Piercing our brain sacks with images and similes which will…